The Return of Miracle Rogues

Introduction

I’m a Season 3 Legend player and a huge Hearthstone fanatic. I’ve had a lot of success running a variant of Ek0p’s Savage Roar Druid and I designed its Season 5 updated version (you can find it here).

With the release of Curse of Naxxramas, Hearthstone meta has been undergoing a lot of changes: we are only midway through Season 5 and we saw Realz in the VGVNT Tournament take 8 of his 9 game wins with Control Paladin, an archetype long forgotten; we saw the ascension of Control Priest, thanks to dark-cultist; and, last but not least, we’ve witnessed Midrange Hunter comeback from relative obscurity to becoming one of the top decks in the meta.

Since Naxxramas Week 2, we’ve witnessed the decline of Miracle Rogue, because of the one Legendary everybody is running in their decks: loatheb. One of the most played decks in Hearthstone has fallen into disuse, until some clever player decided to use Loatheb in their own Miracle Rogue deck. Players like Hyped quickly recognized that assassins-blade is a great way to get damage going on a dead Loatheb turn and with the rise of Midrange Hunter, Miracle Rogue is in a position to become even more popular, due to the many ways the deck has to counter Hunters.

This week I want to analyze TidesofTime’s current version of Miracle Rogue, explaining its strengths and weaknesses.

When you compare the old versions with TidesofTime’s new one, you can see that there aren’t too many differences between them: the archetype has remained exactly the same, as well as the deck core cards. What the new version tries to accomplish is to adapt to the new meta. The new Miracle Rogue needs to be able to answer to Loatheb, since everyone is running it. TidesofTime does that by running Loatheb himself, and by adding assassins-blade to the build. That way, getting rid of Loatheb is a little easier, and the player has something to play when the legendary is dropped into the battlefield and no spells can be played (not conveniently, at least).Because of Loatheb occupying a 5-mana spot, he had to get rid of an Azure-drake: in order not to lose the card draw, though, he added a Novice-engineer to the deck.

As you might have noticed, there are no cold bloods in the deck: cold-blood is a very good card, but it’s a dead card most of the time, and it’s not vital; you can still win most of the time without it. Conceal is a so-called “brick,” too: it’s a dead card until late in the game; that’s why there’s only one copy of it in the deck.

Anyway, despite the little changes that we just analyzed, it is clear that not much has changed since the deck previous versions. Nevertheless, these little changes help the deck fit better into this meta, allowing it to still be viable.

I’ve been analyzing TidesofTime’s Miracle Rogue, but many other famous players are running their own versions! I invite you to check out Reynad’s version, which I find very consistent, and Forsen’s version, with Malygos.

Video Guides

I am going to link a couple of videos where I show you how to play the deck, so that you can see its strengths and weaknesses for yourselves. I recorded a couple of ranked matches, I hope you guys like them!

Conclusion

Nobody knows how the meta is going to be shifting during the next few weeks now that Curse of Naxxramas has been released in its entirety. What I do know is that Miracle Rogue is one of the most consistent deck I have ever played, and if played well it can be exceptionally rewarding.Although Naxxramas has slowed down a bit its dominance in Hearthstone meta game, I am sure that it will rise again and dominate the scene once more.

I hope you guys liked my review! If you have any questions or concerns write in the comments below, or contact me directly: my Battletag is Giordy#2566.